WHAAAAAM!

　　Elizabeth ran over it a few more times, just to be totally certain. "I asked you to?" It definitely sounded like English, but somehow the meaning of the words must have got mixed up.

　　"When you came to see me", said Barnaby. "You told me that you needed my help and I had to come and get you".

　　"Riiiiiiight. And when did I do this?"

　　"A few weeks ago. You gave me the calculations I needed to get the Omnaria working properly. That`s why we went back to the North Star. It was so we could test them. You sounded a lot older then, though. None of us were expecting a twelve-year-old girl to appear. So getting you back home again seemed to be the most sensible thing to do. At least until we could work out exactly what was going on".

　　Elizabeth was shaking her head because it was the only thing she could think of that might prevent her brain from overheating.

　　"But how could I have been to see you? Because to do that I would have needed an Omnaria. And I`m pretty sure that I`d remember having one of those".

　　"You`re right", nodded Barnaby. "You would have needed an Omnaria".

　　"Which I don`t have".

　　"Which you don`t have . . . yet".

　　Barnaby had the look of a man who was about to try and explain something that he couldn`t really understand himself. "What if the you that came to see me was from the future?"

　　The very suggestion made Elizabeth feel more confused and disoriented than she had ever imagined it was possible to be. Which was a lot.

　　"So you`re saying that the reason you brought me here was because my future self asked you to do it while it was visiting you using my own Omnaria that I don`t have?"

　　"Something like that".

　　"All right. But where could I have got an Omnaria from? And even if I had one - which I don`t - why would I use it to come and look for you?"

　　Barnaby`s face was as serious as winter. "Because you said they were trying to kill you".

　　"Kill me?!?!?!?!?!"

　　A billion volts zapped Elizabeth`s chest. If she hadn`t already been sitting down then she would have collapsed straight onto the floor, such was the force with which her legs were currently shaking.If you come across this story on Amazon, it`s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

　　Barnaby sighed. "Your father was a brilliant man, Elizabeth. He invented the Omnaria. I thought the idea was crazy, but he was absolutely convinced that it would work. I was wrong, as usual".

　　"You knew my dad?!?!?!?!?!"

　　Barnaby nodded, slowly, like a tortoise. "He was a student of mine, before the war. Even then he could see what Penelope was planning. Your father believed that if he could solve the Perlman Theorem then the Omnaria could be used to move between the dimensions of time as well as space. He thought that if he could do this then it would be possible to go back and stop Penelope before she began to cause trouble".

　　Elizabeth had heard quite a lot of absurdities in the last few minutes, but this was wiping the floor with the lot of them. Nothing. Absolutely nothing was making any sense whatsoever.

　　"What happened to him?" she asked, faintly, amidst the daze.

　　"Your father disappeared almost fourteen years ago. The final entry in his journal suggested that he thought he had managed to solve the theorem and was going to attempt a full-dimensional boundary jump. I can only think that something terrible must have caused him to get stuck on the other side. I tried to work out what could have gone wrong. I went over everything, but the calculations were too complicated. I just couldn`t solve them . . . Until you came along, that is".

　　Barnaby paused, riding into a lopsided smile. "You said that you had discovered some sort of machine hidden amongst your father`s old things and that you`d been trying to work out how to use it. I suspect that your father had been attempting to build another Omnaria, but for some reason couldn`t get it to function properly. You were very faint and patchy".

　　Elizabeth recalled the scribbled mess of papers that she kept in the memory box underneath her bed. "My dad`s notebook was full of equations", she said, in the quietest whisper. "That must have been what he was working on".

　　Elizabeth felt reality spin by 360 degrees. The power to breathe deserted her. "So . . . the rift made by the Omnaria wasn`t a mistake?"

　　"Not exactly".

　　"And the smoke monsters . . . my dreams . . . all of it was real. And the car crash . . . It wasn`t an accident, was it?"

　　"I expect not", said Barnaby, sombrely. "Your father knew that Penelope would hunt him down if she found out what he was up to. After he disappeared I kept all knowledge of the Omnaria a secret. Two years ago I thought I had made a breakthrough in solving the Perlman Theorem myself. I went to the Wyse Council hoping that they could help, but Arraflax just threw me out. And now it seems that he passed all that information over to the Empress".

　　Elizabeth`s emotions were being flung about like leaves in an autumn wind. A blazing white-hot fury grew inside her. The sensation was unlike any other, flooding her with a vast, immeasurable, life-giving force that flowed all the way to her fingertips and patiently awaited her command.

　　There were lights as well, a soft glow embossed with peculiar multicoloured shapelets that flashed and pulsed like blurry, luminescent beads.

　　Sensations melted together. The entire world fell away, becoming nothing now but pure attention.

　　And as if they were being worked by swift invisible hands, the manacles around her ankles and wrists went clanging to the floor.

　　Then the others were free as well, their chains coming loose at the mere suggestion of Elizabeth`s will.

　　"Well I`ve nae seen it done like that before", said Aelgren, flexing his hands.

　　Elizabeth felt profoundly, wonderfully, inexplicably different. Each and every part of her was buzzing and fizzing and tingling like mad.

　　She got to her feet and raised up her hands before the iron door of the cell.

　　"What are you doing?" asked Luella.

　　Elizabeth`s eyes flashed like green sparks in the darkness.

　　"Getting my dad`s Omnaria back".